Wednesday, September 18, 2013

"You Know How to Leave": Scenes from a Police Riot in Idaho Falls

Officer Clark Lund and illegal arrest victim Delosanto Madrigal.

“You’re under arrest!” snarled Officer Clark Lund as he
lunged into Victor Madrigal’s home, his Taser at the ready. Madrigal had triggered
that response by moving to comply with the officer’s unconstitutional demand
that he produce his driver’s license. Seconds later, Madrigal – who put up no
resistance – was being swarmed by police as his brother Delosanto (known to
friends and family as Dindo) was writhing on the floor as a result of an unprovoked
Taser strike.

Madrigal, a resident of Idaho Falls, Idaho, was not a criminal
suspect, nor had he been accused of a traffic violation. He and his wife Alissa
were having a Saturday evening barbecue on August 31st to celebrate their daughter’s sixth birthday,
and a woman who lives a block and a half away from their home called to
complain about the noise. None of the family’s immediate neighbors was troubled
by the festivities. Chantal Meek, a young mother who lives next door, had
no complaints about the party, but was terrorized when two cops burst into
her home with their guns drawn after Lund called for backup.

According to multiple witnesses on the scene, and a video record of the event, from
the time Officer Lund arrived he was visibly hostile and suspicious.

“It was pretty clear he didn’t intend to leave without
arresting somebody,” Alissa Madrigal told me when I visited the family’s home. “He
and two other officers came right to our backyard. They never knocked on the front
door – they just walked into the yard. Lund, who was the oldest of the three,
stood off in the corner with his hand on his Taser the whole time, staring at
Victor.”

Alissa’s name is on the lease to the home, and she tried to
speak with the officers. This is in part because Victor, a retired professional
baseball player from the Dominican Republic, still has occasional difficulty
with English, and also because he has a deep, resonant voice that carries very
well in the stillness of a late-summer evening. Alissa was also aware that
Victor has a very negative opinion of the Idaho Falls Police Department, in
large measure because of what he describes as routine harassment at their hands
(such as a recent citation he received for driving without headlights – at about
7:00 on an August morning). But the officers repeatedly told Alissa that they
wanted to speak to Victor, rather than to her.

“Victor has a loud voice, and since there were concerns
about noise I wanted to be the one who interacted with the police,” Alissa told
Pro Libertate. “But the officer who spoke with me kept saying, `I don’t want to
talk to you, I want to talk to him’ –
meaning Victor. I told them that we would turn down the music and be as quiet
as possible. But it was obvious that the cops didn’t come to issue a citation.
It seems that within minutes of arriving here they had decided that Victor was
going to be arrested. And the older cop [Lund] had his hand on his Taser
practically from the moment he walked into our backyard.”

Victor during his playing days.

The announcement that the Madrigals would receive a citation
for disturbing the peace prompted Victor to unleash an admittedly vulgar
expression to express his frustration. Rather than trying to maintain the peace
and de-escalate the situation – which is how a peace officer would have
responded – Lund treated Victor to a racially charged taunt.

“If you don’t like it, you know how to leave,” sneered Lund,
a comment that was not merely unprofessional but an unambiguous provocation. Several
of the guests criticized Lund’s remark, some of them pointing out that Madrigal
is a U.S. citizen (he was naturalized in 2007) and had every right to be where
he was.

At that point, Lund announced he was leaving, and Mr.
Madrigal said he was glad to see him go. According to several witnesses I
interviewed, it was after Lund had ended
his investigative contact that he called for backup, removed his Taser from the
over-burdened belt straining to contain his tax-fattened girth, and demanded
that Madrigal show his ID. As Madrigal moved to comply Lund responded by
bellowing that Madrigal was “under arrest.”

According to the official account, Lund and his comrades
were obstructed by a “blockade” as they tried to follow Victor into the living
room, and Dindo supposedly shoved Lund as he pursued his brother. A video of the incident
documents that nobody obstructed the police when they illegally invaded the
Madrigal residence, nor did Dindo – or anybody else- shove Officer Lund, who
was the first through the door.

“I was inside the house, and too far away to touch Lund,”
Dindo recounted to Pro Libertate. “I was shot in the back with the Taser, and
hit the floor face-down. How could that have happened if I had been facing him
and pushing him?”

There were more than a dozen guests – including several
small children – at the Madrigal home at the time of the police riot. On his
way inside the house, Lund made a threatening gesture to Sara Horne, a young
mother holding a newborn baby in her lap. One witness recalled that Lund “made
like he was going to back-hand” the terrified woman. Horne told me that Lund
pointed his flashlight and Taser into her face.

Officer shoves 79-year-old Maria Madrigal.

Maria Madrigal, the brothers’ 79-year-old mother, had been
sleeping before the police surged into the home. Summoned by loud noises, Maria
came into the living room to find Dindo on the ground and Victor in handcuffs with
a Taser in his face. Concerned for her sons’ safety yet displaying eerie
composure, Maria repeatedly reached out to calm and reassure Victor and Dindo.
One of the officers guarding Victor shoved Maria in the chest.

“Don’t push my mother!” exclaimed Victor, instinctively rising
to his feet to defend. As he did so, his head made incidental contact with one
of the officers assaulting him. That act would later be described as “battery
on an officer.”

Letty Hernandez, a pregnant mother, was also shoved by an officer
– most likely Lund – just before a Taser was fired a few inches from her face. As
she was knocked to the floor, her abdomen struck the corner of a couch. After
paramedics arrived, Letty was told that she should go to the hospital for an examination.
To minimize expenses – since her family doesn’t have health insurance -- she
drove herself to the emergency room.

Victor rises to defend his elderly mother.

On the Monday following the police riot, Letty called the
department to find out how the medical expenses would be dealt with. She was
brusquely informed that she should be abjectly grateful that she wasn’t
arrested, like her husband who had “interfered” with the police. Letty’s
husband, Miguel, was not arrested that evening. Like their comrades elsewhere,
police in Idaho Falls aren’t fastidious about such details.

The initial police contact – to investigate a noise
complaint, recall – occurred at around 10:49 PM. Within about twenty minutes,
the air was thick with shouting and screaming, and a fleet of about a dozen
police cars had converged on the address. Lund’s attack on Dindo left the
living room floor filled with shattered furniture. So in the interests of
preserving the “peace,” Lund and his costumed buddies assaulted two unresisting
men, committed felonious battery on a 79-year-old woman and a pregnant mother,
destroyed property, terrorized a completely innocent next-door neighbor, and
disrupted an entire city block.

Dindo was charged with resisting and obstructing an officer.
Victor was likewise charged with resisting arrest, as well as battery on an
officer. Their grim mugshots were prominently displayed on the local Sunday Evening
News, along with a police-provided
summary asserting
that Victor “began yelling and swearing” the moment police arrived. The local
ABC affiliate claimed
that the brothers had been arrested “in a fight with police.”

“I didn’t struggle with the police at all,” Victor told Pro
Libertate. “I was sitting on the couch with my hands behind my back, saying,
`Here, go ahead’ -- and you can see in the video that I’m not resisting. Dindo
was facing away from the officer when he was tazed. The only time I didn’t
cooperate was when one of them shoved my mother, and all I did was stand up and
say, `Don’t push my mother.’”

Within a few days of the assault on their home, the
Madrigals were able to post unedited video of most of the episode on-line. They
were also able to get at least a portion of their story into the local press.

“We have a friend who contacted the Post-Register and persuaded them to send a reporter to come and
interview us, as well as our neighbors,” Alissa explained to me.

“It was never that invasive,” said neighbor Chantal Meek,
referring to the noise from the birthday party. “I’m 20 feet from where they
were outside.” However, she did regard as “invasive” the actions of the two
Idaho Falls police officers who barged into her home with their guns drawn
after Lund had called for backup.

Amanda Saxton, another witness who was visiting a next-door
neighbor on the night of the party, also told the Post-Register that she had her door open “and didn’t hear anything
that would justify a noise complaint.” According to Saxton, “Victor came over and invited our kids
over [to the party]. They seem nice.”

Chief McBride claimed that the “regular activities” at the
Madrigal home include “loud music, yelling, shouting, arguing and fighting
until late hours of the night all summer long” – something denied by both the
family’s immediate neighbors, and the Madrigals themselves.

Maria Madrigal (l.) with Victor and Alissa Madrigal.

“We had three parties this summer, all of them for children’s
birthdays,” Victor pointed out to me.

“I work two jobs, and so does Victor,” added Alissa. “I’m
rarely home during the weekends, and during the weeknights we have no time for
the kind of parties they claim go on here all the time.”

If those parties went on all summer long, why didn’t the
police receive a complaint prior to August 31st? According to McBride, the
neighbor who spoke to him “never reported any of these parties because of fear
of retaliation.”

During my September 13 visit to the Madrigal home, the
family hosted a large number of neighbor kids – happy, well-dressed,
well-behaved children from good homes presided over by responsible parents who
obviously would not send their children to a house filled with angry, violent
people of the kind depicted in McBride’s dishonest little screed.

According to McBride, “officers have the authority to make
an arrest for a public offense committed in their presence and to use the force
necessary to affect [sic – he’s a
police officer, after all, and therefore a stranger to literacy] the arrest.
Running into one’s house or into a crowd does not prevent the arrest. People and
things usually get knocked around when the arrest is made.”

What was the “public offense” that supposedly justified that
armed incursion? Recall that Lund had said he was leaving before he returned to arrest Madrigal, who – according to every
non-police witness present -- was complying
with the unjustified demand to produce ID. It was after he turned to leave that Lund called for backup and drew his
Taser. All of this happened after Victor Madrigal, replying to Lund’s statement
that he was going, said, in a conversational voice: “All right, then – go.”

Prior to this, Lund had made a deliberately antagonistic
remark to Victor that had an unmistakable racial subtext. In an interview with
the Post-Register McBride claimed: “There
was [sic, again] no racial comments made
in the video until they [the Madrigals and guests] brought it up.” Calling this
assessment disingenuous is an act of tremendous generosity. Like his minion
Clark Lund, Chief McBride is bright enough to recognize what it means to tell a
large brown man with an exotic accent that he doesn’t belong in Idaho Falls.

“Idaho Falls police officers are not racist,” McBride insisted
in his op-ed column. “We are biased against crime and disorder. We have a
responsibility to the citizens of Idaho Falls to keep the community free from
crime and disorder.”

Chantal Meek, the neighbor who was terrorized in her home by
armed strangers carrying out that sacred “responsibility,” offers a very
different perspective.

“I don’t see why race wouldn’t be an issue with the police,”
she told the Post-Register. Referring
to Victor and Delosanto, Meek observed that they “are obviously not from Idaho.
I think it was uncalled for.”

According to McBride, an official review board ruled that
the actions of Lund and his comrades were appropriate. The board somehow reached
that conclusion without interviewing any of the witnesses to the incident.

It is entirely possible that the actions of Lund and his
comrades were not motivated by racial bigotry, but by a different form of
tribalism -- the shared conceit that as members of the punitive caste they are
entitled to slap down impudent Mundanes for the grievous offense commonly called “contempt
of cop.”

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24 comments:

kirk
said...

let's face reality: cops and their actions reveal that cops have become an occupation force.

when things worsen economically and financially, as it will, we will all be at the mercy of the occupation force. given the nature of many of the costumed brutes feeding at the tax trough, they will then reveal their true natures - quislings who have sold out to the power structure and sadists who really like their jobs harming people.

be prepared for the onslaught as things worsen and the dogs of hatred, currently barely muzzled, are set loose on us.

Kirk, I agree with your comments with exception to being at their mercy. Those of us who have had enough of cops' criminal conduct outnumber and outgun them by several orders of magnitude and the numbers are growing. Eventually these swine will pick a fight with people who do not cower like sheeple and the call to arms for all of us will be impossible to ignore.

Except most Americans are state-worshipping cowards who always give the cops the benefit of the doubt. As long as they have the pubic on they're side, politically (and legally) the police will be able to keep getting away with their crimes.

Thank you as always for the work that you do. Please please post an update to this story when (hopefully) the charges are dropped. (And hopefully) they sue the police dept... (and hopefully) several of the criminal pigs get hit by a bus.

There was once a time when both parents didn't need to work two jobs each in order to pay around half of what they earned to fill the trough fill the ever increasing herds of tax guzzlers.

There was a time when people didn't have their attempts at saving for their own and their family's future robbed from them by money printing, to bail out the parasitic class' favoured cronies.

There was a time when people weren't fed a daily diet of the Hobbesian myth, in hourly and half hourly installments - the myth that their families friends and neighbours (no to mention those who "aren't from round these parts") are a constant threat to their safety, and full time specialists in thuggery are needed to protect them from those who would otherwise be their community and support network, but whom they are persuaded not to use their few remaining free hours to get to know.

I hate to say it, but he should go back to the Dominican Republic. This country has gone so far to he'll, him and his family would be safer there than in this crooked backwards America. I've had as much as I can take of this place and even I am getting ready to move out of America.

Amerika, the fundamentally changed America under Obama, is now a Police State with Detention Centers, armored vehicles, indefinite detention and no trial, purchase of 5 bullets for every citizen by "Homeland Security"... And people will keep electing those that make this possible! The sheep want more!!

Did we watch the same video? There was a noise complaint which continued even further while the officers were on scene! If they would've shut up & took their child's birthday party for the adults inside the arrest would've never happened. The tasering was due to getting in the way of an arrest, obstruction. By all means, in the cop's mind is the suspect is going inside to get a gun to shoot me! So, everyone needs to understand that you can't run inside a home when dealing with police officers just outside.

Furthermore, why did she allow the rest of the police officers to remain inside her home? After her husband and brother-in-law were handcuffed and escorted out, she should've went outside with the rest of the police officers while her party guests remained inside QUIETLY. After all, it was 11:00 at night!!!

The only people who "obstructed" Lund as he barged into the home without cause or warrant (after he and two others had illegally entered the backyard in the same fashion) were Letty Hernandez and her unborn child. Dindo Madrigal was nowhere near Lund when he was tasered in the back.

By all means, in the cop's mind is the suspect is going inside to get a gun to shoot me!

This is probably true, but both morally and legally irrelevant -- true, because cops in general labor under a cultivated sense of paranoia, and Lund in particular was doing everything he could to exacerbate this needless confrontation; legally irrelevant, because at the time Lund tried to arrest Victor, the noise complaint had been dealt with, the Madrigals were cooperative (including Victor, who was getting his ID), and Lund had already announced, "I'm going" -- which meant that the investigative contact was over.

So, everyone needs to understand that you can't run inside a home when dealing with police officers just outside.

From the moment this episode began, the police were unlawful intruders and should have been dealt with accordingly -- that is, ordered off the property and told to come back with a warrant.

Additionally, it's important to underscore the fact that the Madrigals were cooperating at the tine Lund announced that he was going. How could Victor have cooperated with the demand for his driver's license (which wasn't legally required of him anyway) without going into the house to get his ID?

If the "problem" was noise, it could have been solved by having one officer knock at the front door and inform the adult who answered that a neighbor had complained. That contact would have lasted perhaps a minute or so. Instead, the police trespassed onto the property and precipitated a needlessly confrontational contact that developed into a full-scale police riot that disrupted an entire neighborhood.

By any rational perception, that's a failure for which the police bear full responsibility.

It's 10:49PM and officers arrive on scene for a noise complaint. It's obviously noisy because they can hear people talking and music coming from the back yard. So, instead of knocking on the front door, the police go straight to the source, the backyard, which is NOT illegal for them to do so. Ignorance of the law is part of the problem here. Investigative contact is not over until the officers have physically left.

But, based on Officer Lund's statements & actions he was really wanting to arrest someone that night. One thing I find odd is why the other officers just stood there when Lund said he was leaving. Why did they not also turn to leave, they remained on scene as if they were waiting for him to return.

...based on Officer Lund's statements & actions he was really wanting to arrest someone that night. One thing I find odd is why the other officers just stood there when Lund said he was leaving. Why did they not also turn to leave, they remained on scene as if they were waiting for him to return.

It's also worth asking why three police officers were sent to answer a noise complaint -- something that could be addressed by one officer knocking on the front door. I'm persuaded that the intent to arrest someone -- most likely Victor -- existed before the police trespassed onto his family's property (about which more anon), and that the objective was to create a pretext for that arrest.

So, instead of knocking on the front door, the police go straight to the source, the backyard, which is NOT illegal for them to do so.

Unless they're executing a warrant, making a felony arrest, or acting in exigent circumstances, it certainly was illegal for them to enter the Madrgial family's home or the curtilage thereof. (Most federal case law dealing with curtilage specifies that warrantless entry into a backyard is permissible only if officers have knocked on the front door and not gotten a response.)

The illegality of the IFPD's intrusion on the Madrigal property is underscored by one element of the Idaho State Supreme Court's otherwise horrible ruling in State v. Lusby (2008)--

http://caselaw.findlaw.com/id-court-of-appeals/1385111.html

That ruling dealt with a case very similar to the Madrigals', in which officers were investigating a "disturbance" between Ms. Lusby and a neighbor. Lusby, angry and disgusted, ended the contact with the officer and went into her home. The officer barged into the apartment and "arrested" her for "resisting and obstructing" -- and subsequently found a marijuana pipe.

Both the trial court and the state supreme court ruled that the entry was unlawful. The supreme court, however, insisted that Lusby's resistance included an alleged act of "battery" against the intruder, and that this retroactively justified the otherwise unlawful entry.

I suspect, but cannot (yet) prove, that cops in Idaho, post-Lusby, have been trained to provoke "resistance" as a way of validating unlawful entry onto private property. That would certainly explain the behavior of Lund and his buddies at the Madrigal home.

One additional point regarding "investigative contact":

In the case of Rita Hutchens in Sandpoint, Ms. Hutchens was accosted by an officer on her own property. The officer kept trying to induce Rita to step to a public sidewalk. Rita refused, and turned away -- and the officer reached out and threw Rita to the ground, eventually arresting her for "resisting and obstructing."

The trial judge threw that charge out, ruling that when Rita turned to leave, the investigative contact was over, despite the physical presence of the officer nearby.

Lucky for me, I'm white and I grew up in Idaho, so I never have had to deal with this kind of crap personally. However, I do embrace punk rock culture, meaning I dress like a punk, look like a punk, and act like a punk, and so I've had my own share of crap from IFPD myself (apparently the way I dress and act makes me a suspicious individual, which warrants some harassment). I've never had to deal with anything this bad, but I'm 22 now, and by now I can honestly say that I have no love for, and no trust in, the IFPD. I don't think I would ever call them for anything to be honest, because I get the feeling that it would only come back against me or some other innocent person. I would like to know, we're supposed to call the police when normal citizens are trying to screw us over, who are we supposed to call when its the cops who are screwing us over?

Maybe you should check out his latest exploits with the police. Suckerpunching a 24 year old less then half his size, causing bleeding on the brain, after the boy hit his dog and pulled over to apologize. Sounds like a menace to society to me...

According to witnesses, the "accident" was the result of either recklessness or deliberate malice, and the "apology" consisted of a racial slur and a challenge.

On their account, this "kid" is a tatted-up, foul-mouthed young man who is notorious for speeding in residential areas and actually accelerated to hit the family dog, which was killed in front of Victor's daughters. Rather than being contrite, he was hostile and flung an epithet in Victor's face. After Victor punched him, the kid reportedly declined medical care on the scene.

I don't consider a punch to be a proper reply to an insult. It's doubtful that an aggravated assault charge is going to stick. Even if it did, this would hardly be retroactive justification for the criminal behavior of Chief McBride's costumed simians.

This 24 year old is my brother. Before you start talking about what happened you should know what the hell you are talking about. My brother is not "tatted" up. He is the nicest person you will ever meet. He would never intentionally hurt anything or anyone. My brother has a serious brain condition now, thanks to Victor. That hit to the head was meant for more than to just hurt him. My brother declined medical care at the time because he didnt even remember what happened, his name, or his own family. That dog was going to get hit sooner or later for always being in the street. If Victor cared enough for the dog he would have put him on a leash. My brother is going to suffer for the rest of his life, all because of a little chiwawa dog. Its sad.